Sara Ann, you summarized my level of confusion very well. When the doctor told me about the situation – he framed it as a choice. My initial reaction was that it seemed pretty important to figure out how invasive it was, and he agreed right away so maybe that’s the way he was leaning. Perhaps he was trying to give me a little bit of a sense of control of the situation - it’s already clear to me that control is one of the things that you lose through this process. Anyway, the current plan is to do another biopsy (or maybe a TURBT? – this is all new to me and I’m not even sure if there’s much of a difference) this coming week. He said that we could start BCG a couple of weeks later.
As I’ve been thinking about this, the decision seems to hinge on how bad things could go under each scenario. In each case, what are the odds that I pass some type of ‘tipping point’ in the progression of the disease during this period of time? If I start a six-week course of BCG and wait a couple of months to find out it was invasive, it seems like there’s a pretty devastating potential downside to that if the cancer spreads. If I get the biopsy done and wait two or three weeks to start BCG, it doesn’t seem like the potential downside is quite as dramatic. But again, this is all new to me and I don’t trust my judgment and really value inputs from folks like you.
So thanks again to the both of you for your comments. I haven’t seen the pathology report, yet, but will be sure to get a copy and review it. And prepare questions for the doc.
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